B5103-001: Social Networks & Social Capital

Having effective social networks is the key to important business outcomes, whether finding jobs, earning early promotions, harnessing creativity, or ensuring survival of the organization. This course shows how to understand, measure, and develop these key resources. The approach is hands on and will involve diagnosing students' own social networks to identify career opportunities as well as analyzing corporate networks to better identify business opportunities such as IPOs and mergers. The course is organized in three parts: (1) evaluating and building students' own social networks to achieve career outcomes; (2) understanding social capital in organizations and industries as it affects organizational performance; and (3) developing interpersonal skills for building productive social relationships.

Professor Kuwabara's research and teaching interests are in the area of social exchange and social networks, focusing in particular on structural aspects of social interactions and relationships that promote or undermine interpersonal trust. One stream of his research considers how and when trust develops between individuals and groups and in different cultures (e.g. the U.S. vs. Japan). More recently, he has...